UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM CENTER FOR ADVANCED HOLOCAUST STUDIES
Life After the Ashes The Postwar Pain, and Resilience,
of Young Holocaust Survivors
Peter Suedfeld
W A S H I N G T O N , D. C.
Life After the Ashes The Postwar Pain, and Resilience,
of Young Holocaust Survivors
Peter Suedfeld
MONNA AND OTTO WEINMANN LECTURE SERIES 15 MAY 2002
The assertions, opinions, and conclusions in this occasional paper are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council or of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
First printing, August 2002
Copyright © 2002 by Peter Suedfe ld, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
THE MONNA AND OTTO WEINMANN ANNUAL LECTURE focuses on Holocaust survivors
who came to America, and on their families. Born in Poland and raised in Austria, Monna Steinbach Weinmann (1906–1991) fled to England from Vienna in the autumn of 1938. Otto Weinmann (1903–1993) was born in Vienna and raised in Czechoslovakia. He served in the Czech, French, and British armies, was injured in the D-Day invasion at Normandy, and received the Croix de Guerre for his valiant contributions during the war. Monna Steinbach and Otto Weinmann married in London in 1941 and immigrated to the United States in 1948. Funding for this program is made possible by a generous grant from their daughter Janice Weinman Shorenstein. The Monna and Otto Weinmann Annual Lecture is organized by the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In the mid-1980s, Robert Krell, my good friend and the 1997 Monna and Otto
Weinmann lecturer, convinced me that I actually am a Holocaust survivor despite not having
been in a concentration camp. I had avoided that fate by being taken in 1944 into a Red Cross
orphanage in Budapest, with false Christian papers, accelerated instruction on how to behave
during a Catholic mass, and exhortations never to reveal my name, background, or other signs
of being Jewish.
Having been convinced, in 1991 I attended the first international gathering of child
survivors in New York City (see Marks, 1993). Much to my surprise, there I met an old friend
and fellow social psychologist, Ervin Staub. It turned out that he, too, was a child survivor from
Budapest. During my professional career I had read many articles about Holocaust survivors,
and I had been imbued with the general consensus that the overwhelming majority were
irreparably scarred by their experiences: unable to pursue successful occupations, unable to
have close emotional relationships, and deeply neurotic if not borderline psychotic.
I knew that I refuted this prognosis; but Rob and Ervin were also child survivors and
had become well-known behavioral scientists. Each of us held a full professorship at a major
North American university, had a normally happy family life, and—as far as I could tell—was
in good mental health. Adapting and oversimplifying Sir Karl Popper’s reasoning about black
swans and white swans (1934/1959), I could argue that it takes only one healthy, successful
2 • LIFE AFTER THE ASHES
survivor to disconfirm the theory that all survivors are devastated beyond repair; and now I had
three such disconfirmations. I also noticed that much of the literature was based on clinical
interviews and other anecdotal research, a method well-known to be susceptible to various
biases and research artifacts (e.g., Helmreich, 1992; Suedfeld, 1996a).
THE RESEARCH PROJECT
My scientific roots are in experimental psychology, and I rely on data that are systematically
collected and statistically analyzed. So I began to collect objective, quantitative data on both
child and adult survivors of the Holocaust. During the past ten years, my research group has
conducted a number of studies based on videotaped oral histories and written self-report
measures, thus using both qualitative and quantitative material but basically numerical methods
to understand the material. Let me briefly summarize our research methodology. Our data come
from videotaped oral history archives in Vancouver and in Columbus, Ohio; from
questionnaires administered at five gatherings of survivors and their families, and from a non-
Holocaust survivor comparison group. The videotapes were analyzed by a variety of
quantitative content analytic systems, and the questionnaires were scored according to standard
instructions. Both kinds of data were then processed through statistical analyses. We break
down the data as follows:
Survivors
1. “Identified” vs. “hidden” survivors: “Identified” means that during the time of the
persecution the authorities had identified them as Jews and they were either in camps, slave
labor programs, or ghettos. “Hidden” survivors were either physically concealed—in rooms, as
was Anne Frank, or in forests, underground bunkers, sewers, and other such places—or in
“open hiding,” not physically concealed but hiding their Jewish identity. Many had false papers
identifying them as Christian. A high proportion were children passing as non-Jews and
sheltered by Christian families, monasteries, convents, orphanages, and other kinds of group
homes.
2. Child vs. older: People who were fifteen years or younger at the end of the war were
categorized as child survivors.
3. Time period (videotaped interviews only): The “before” period was prior to when
the war affected the country in which the survivor lived; the “early” Holocaust was from when
the Nazis first occupied or dominated the country where the survivor lived, up to the point
where the interviewee was removed from home. This usually meant being deported to a camp,
Peter Suedfeld • 3
moved into a ghetto, or going into hiding. The “late” Holocaust period was from removal from
home until liberation. “After” was post-liberation to the time of the interview.
Comparison Group
Members of the comparison or control group were Jewish volunteers, in the same age
range as the survivors. These volunteers had lived in North America or other safe places before
1945, and they were living in North America at the time of the data collection. Control-group
members filled out our paper and pencil measures only. The individuals were recruited through
Jewish organizations in Vancouver, Miami Beach, and Columbus.
LIGHT FROM THE ASHES
In 1996, the International Society of Political Psychology held its annual conference in
Vancouver, the city that has been my home for thirty years. As part of my contribution to that
meeting, I organized a symposium to consider how a particular set of childhood experiences
affected the later life of an individual (Suedfeld, 1996b). Because I knew that several of the
members of the Society had either survived or fled from the Holocaust, I wanted my colleagues
to reconsider the widespread assumption that early trauma causes irreparable psychic damage.
Given that the potential speakers had grown up to be respected social scientists, it was clear that
even the most massive and widespread traumatic event of our time had not destroyed their
lives; but that outcome left unanswered the questions of what effects the Holocaust did have on
them and, more broadly, on other child survivors.
Through Ervin Staub and others, I found several more colleagues who fit the criteria.
Several turned me down: they didn’t want to think about those unhappy times, or they didn’t
want to reveal themselves so personally and painfully at an open forum. I was disappointed, but
eventually recruited four participants. I intended only to organize and chair the session,
introduce the speakers, and maintain an orderly discussion period. I am one of the many
survivors who were, and in many cases still are, reluctant to talk about their experiences even to
their families and certainly in public.
Much to my surprise and dismay, both the speakers and the audience insisted that I
become an active participant and tell my own story. This gave me a much more sympathetic
fellow feeling for the people who had declined my invitation. But, in all honor, I could not
refuse what I had urged others to do, so we wound up with five speakers.
The session was crammed with people who had come to hear the life stories of
colleagues and friends they had known and respected, personally or through their publications,
4 • LIFE AFTER THE ASHES
for many years. It was the first time I had ever seen tears from audience members at a scientific
symposium. Several were so moved as they learned about the horrors through which some of
the participants had lived, and as the audience felt the painful forthrightness with which those
events, and their consequences, were presented. We were all reminded that, although two-thirds
of Europe’s Jews died during the Holocaust, the speakers were drawn from the fewer than ten
percent of children who had survived.
At the end of the session, and during the rest of the meeting, people kept coming up,
thanking me, and persuading me to follow up the symposium with something more lasting.
These suggestions eventually led to the publication of the book, Light from the Ashes: Social
Science Careers of Young Holocaust Refugees and Survivors (Suedfeld, 2001).
The book contains autobiographical chapters by seventeen people whose early life was
disrupted by Nazi persecution. Six Jewish youngsters spent the entire war in German-
dominated countries, as did one Christian child whose father eventually died in a concentration
camp because he was a prominent opponent of the Nazis. Ten others, including one from
another anti-Nazi Christian family, became refugees. All eventually emigrated from Europe and
pursued research careers in the humanities or social sciences.
I asked each author to describe his or her childhood and youth, and to trace the
influence of those experiences to who and what the person became: professionally, personally,
and societally. I deliberately invited people whose research was not focused on the Holocaust,
and the majority were like me: they had never thought about how the Holocaust might have
affected their eventual choice of discipline, research topics, and theoretical and methodological
approaches. Some had done their best to avoid thinking about their Holocaust experiences—
and some of the people I invited declined because they preferred to continue avoiding such
thoughts.
The lives of the contributors, before, during, and after the war, are impressive in their
diversity. Whether they survived by pretending to be Christians, or lived in hiding with
relatives or foster families, or fled to strange foreign lands—Britain, America, Australia and, in
one case, China—and no matter where and in what field they wound up, they were able to
discover connections between those early events and their adult self. In retrospect, their
(actually, I suppose I should say “our”) values, personality, emotions, politics, close
relationships, and scientific work were seen as connected organically to the children we had
been. All of us lost family and home early in life; some of us lost even our identity. We
survived a varied range of dangers and privations , and had to rebuild our life in a new country,
a new culture, a new language, and often with new people.
Peter Suedfeld • 5
In contemplating the book to which we all contributed, I think about it in the context of
my broader research on survivors of the Holocaust. In what follows, I shall use some of the
chapters in Light from the Ashes to illustrate the findings of the wider-scale research project.
One striking finding has been that many of my interviewees considered the years after
the war to be as traumatic as the Holocaust itself, and sometimes more so. Some, separated
from their family, feared never to see them again—a fear that only too often was confirmed.
Having lived through the siege of Budapest in a Red Cross orphanage, I was terrified after
liberation that I would be lost forever. I was passing as Christian, under a false name unknown
to my family, and my current orphanage was only the latest in a series of bombed-out shelters,
far from the original address where they had left me. Thus, even if my relatives had survived, I
was convinced that they could never find me; increasingly convinced as the months rolled by
and other children were reunited with their families. Unlike so many of my cohort, I was lucky:
an aunt and uncle, following a list of all Red Cross children’s shelters in Budapest, did
eventually stumble on the right one.
Although my mother did not return from Auschwitz, my father survived forced labor
and a concentration camp, and came back to take me to America. For those children who were
left alone, the adjustment to years in an orphanage, or to foster families who were not always
welcoming, could be worse than life during the war. Some of these children found loving,
warm foster parents and siblings; but others were abused, neglected, and rejected, sometimes
shunted from one family or one orphanage to another until they grew up. One of our
interviewees, orphaned during the Holocaust, was the subject of a postwar custody battle
between his Christian foster parents and his dead father’s sister. The latter won the fight, and
then put him in a Jewish orphanage. She didn’t want him; she only wanted to make sure he’d be
brought up Jewish. Another, a young teenager at liberation, was placed with relatives who felt
that he was forced on them. Although his inte lligence was, if anything, superior, they managed
to get rid of him by committing him to a home for the mentally disabled, where he was kept
until he was old enough to go out on his own. Several felt safer with their Christian rescuers
than with parents returning from concentration camps, and resisted integration into a family and
religion that meant nothing but danger.
The process of emigrating to the eventual place of settlement could be long and hard,
as people waited for visas, passports, affidavits of support, and other forms of help. Sometimes,
this process took place in Nazi-indoctrinated communities among whom it was still dangerous
to be a Jew. Hadassa Black-Gutman, one of the contributors to Light from the Ashes, wandered
from Ukraine to Poland to Czechoslovakia to Germany to Australia, a journey that took five
6 • LIFE AFTER THE ASHES
years and occasioned three name changes, learning three new languages, and persecution by
antisemitic teachers and children all along the way. René Goldman, another contributor, was
orphaned in France and indoctrinated in a Communist orphanage. Thus indoctrinated, he
migrated to his parents’ original home, Poland, before studying in China and ending up as a
Canadian Sinologist.
My father and I spent three years in Vienna waiting for a visa to the United States. He
put me into an expensive boarding school, which he could afford because he was working for
the U.S. Army and had access to dollars, food, and Army surplus clothing. What he did not
realize was that the only Viennese who could afford to send their children there were those who
had done well under the Nazi regime. Having relaxed my vigilance with the end of the war, I
was soon discovered to be Jewish by my antisemitic schoolmates, and spent the next year or so
in one fight after another.
Even arrival in a more tolerant country had its difficulties. Learning still another
language was less of a problem for most than becoming familiar with the nuances and
unspoken assumptions of the culture. I remember laughing when a classmate claimed to be
related to Roy Rogers—I knew that Roy Rogers was a fictional character in the movies. I
laughed when another child said she was part American Indian—I knew that when a people
were defeated, they were exterminated, and that therefore there could be no Indians, even part
Indians, left alive. In turn, my class laughed at me when I had my first turn at bat and then
didn’t know which way to run the bases, or when I automatically kicked at a ball instead of
hitting it over a net. Eric Klinger, another contributor to the book, went from soccer in Austria
to cricket and field hockey in Australia to baseball, basketball, and football in the U.S., all
between the ages of six and ten.
THE FINDINGS
I will discuss the contributions to the book, as well as some of our research findings, under four
major headings: long-term reactions to the Holocaust, personal relationships, work, and adult
personality.
Long-term Reactions to the Holocaust
Working with child survivors, and being one, poses an interesting paradox. Much of
the material that concerns us as researchers and research subjects, or as autobiographers, relates
to the distant past, our early youth; but we are now in our late middle age, in our 60s or 70s.
Peter Suedfeld • 7
Thus, in dealing with the Holocaust, our childhood recaptures our mind; in dealing with our
present, we confront the limited span of years still to come.
How do we look back on our childhood, more than fifty years after the end of the war?
Robert Krell has pointed out that after the war, the sufferings of children caught up in
the Holocaust were often dismissed not only by other children but by adults, frequently
including their own parents. They were told that their experiences in ghettos or in hiding could
not have been as bad as those of concentration camp survivors; besides, children can’t really
remember things clearly; and even if they did, they would forget them soon enough. Many of
our interviewees have said that this disdain, and the silence it enforced, were among the most
difficult emotional problems they experienced after the war (Krell, 1997).
With the passage of time, many of these problems have eased. We have become more
comfortable with our new language, culture, and compatriots; many of us, although by no
means all, have become less stressed by our memories or even by talking about them. As we
approach and enter old age, however, we find ourselves thinking more about the past, often a
painful process. The mature reinterpretation of things that happened long ago can lead to
forgiveness and peace; but it can also lead to the realization that some things we accepted as
inevitable, or for our own good, were neither.
With advancing age, retirement, and the emptying of the home nest, more child
survivors have begun to participate in survivor gatherings and organizations, written their
autobiographies, and agreed to be interviewed for oral history archives. For our research
subjects and the contributors to the book, doing the interview, writing the chapter, or filling out
the questionnaires often initiated a process of greater openness to their own memories and
emotions, as well as to communication with other people
Thinking about the Holocaust
Survivors are thinking more about the Holocaust than they have allowed themselves to
do for five decades, but, perhaps inescapably, most still find it incomprehensible (Table 1).
8 • LIFE AFTER THE ASHES
Table 1. Thinking About the Holocaust
Category Child Survivors Controls Adult Survivors
• Influences my present life 12.81 10.46 12.00
• Intrusive thoughts about it 7.46 5.12 7.44
• Have tried to make sense of 2.76 2.72 2.94
why it happened
• Think I know why it happened 2.33 1.77 2.46
(Mean times mentioned)
Many survivors, however, have some clear ideas about what enabled them to survive.
They recall dealing with problems in a rational practical way, rather than by denial or other
palliative strategies (Suedfeld, Fell, & Krell, 1998; see Figure 1).
Fig. 1. Coping Strategies
Control subjects, trying to explain why some people survived the Holocaust while
others did not, tend to attribute it to the personal qualities of the survivors, such as
psychological strength. Survivors themselves, while recognizing the importance of such
qualities, are much more likely also to cite external factors in their environment. Child
survivors especially acknowledge the help of other people. This seems obvious: very few
children could survive even in a normal, peaceful environment, without such help (Table 2).
0 2 4 6 8
10 12 14 16 18 20
Before Early Late After Time Period
Mea
n T
imes
Men
tione
d
Emotion-Oriented Problem-Oriented Religion/Chance
Peter Suedfeld • 9
Table 2. Factors in Survival1
Category Child Survivors Controls Adult Survivors • Social Support From… Ø Family 44 10 28 Ø Friends 5 0 10 Ø Gentiles 36 0 8
• Being Secretive 6 3 5 • Being Careful 6 0 8 • Fate/Luck/Chance 49 26 50 • Aryan Appearance 10 0 3 • Hope/Persistence/Determination 9 19 25 • Courage/Patience 5 10 3 • Good Health 4 7 3 • Psychological Strength 3 13 3
• General Internal Factors 24 35 60 • General External Factors 96 68 78
(Percent mentioned)
But it also seems that this help was given, or arranged, at the initiative of others: As Figure 2
shows, asking for help is not highly ranked in how child survivors coped with problems during
the Holocaust, nor since then (see also Suedfeld et al., 1997).
Fig. 2. Seeking Social Support
1 Survivors were asked: “What factors were important in your surviving the Holocaust?” Comparison subjects were asked: “What factors were important in whether or not a person survived the Holocaust?”
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Mea
n S
core
Before Early Late After
Time Period
Child Survivors Adult Survivors
10 • LIFE AFTER THE ASHES
Personal Relationships
Throughout this paper, I occasionally refer to the sequence of psychosocial crises
described by psychologist Erik Erikson (1950, 1959, 1975, 1982). He viewed such crises or
conflicts as occurring throughout the life span, each marking an important transition and each
having either a favorable resolution that contributes to further psychosocial growth and
development, or an unfavorable one that hampers such growth. Our research treated the crises
as important conflicts regardless of their chronological or sequential appearance in the taped
interviews (Suedfeld et al., 2002).
One of these crises is trust versus mistrust toward other people (Figure 3). During the
war, Jewish children and those whose families dissented from Nazi politics learned that other
people, especially adults, were dangerously unpredictable. Parents disappeared, leaving them
among strangers. Strangers could change from being helpful to being deadly enemies, for
reasons the child could not understand; or, as many of our interviews showed, an antisemitic
murderer could for some unfathomable reason become the protector of one particular Jewish
child. Even the country upon which they had bestowed their first patriotic loyalty threatened
them. For example, Karl Butzer, one of the political refugees who contributed to the book, fled
with his family to Britain in 1937. Describing the German bombing of England, he wrote:
“[The German] planes with the undulating engine noise were my people. But if they won and
‘got’ us, my people would hurt us. So I hoped the raspy British engines would win” (Butzer,
2001, p. 374). I remember having a similar psychological conflict during the Allied bombing of
Budapest.
Fig. 3. Eriksonian Crisis: Trust vs. Mistrust
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
Tim
es m
entio
ned
Trust Mistrust
Child Survivors Adult Survivors
Peter Suedfeld • 11
Without exhibiting the paranoia and antisocial personality patterns predicted by some
experts, child survivors have grown up independent, self-reliant, and wary. Many share a
generalized skepticism about other people. As a logical corollary of mistrust, child survivors
tend to have little faith in the benevolence of people, or the world in general—even less than do
adult survivors (Figure 4).
Fig. 4. Benevolence of People and the World
At the same time, they have very strong attachments to their own family and social
circle. Their responses in regard to Erikson’s conflict between intimacy and isolation are shown
in Figure 5.
Fig. 5. Eriksonian Crisis: Intimacy vs. Isolation
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5
Benevolence of People Benevolence of the World
Mea
n S
core
Child Survivors Child Controls Adult Survivors
Neutral Point
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
Tim
es m
entio
ned
Intimacy Isolation
Child Survivors Adult Survivors
12 • LIFE AFTER THE ASHES
Child survivors overwhelmingly feel intimately connected with others. Almost every
chapter in Light from the Ashes, and almost every videotaped interview, emphasizes the
importance of love, affection, support, and caring among the survivor’s childhood family and
friends, as well as between the survivor as an adult and his or her spouse, surviving parents,
uncles and aunts, children, grandchildren, friends, and colleagues. This reaction is not
undiscriminating: child survivors also describe unhappy relationships and encounters with
xenophobes and antisemites, but they describe their relationships in mostly positive tones. The
survivors also consider themselves to be good and loving parents—although their children
sometimes feel intimidated by the parents’ mysterious and frightening past, insistence on
educational achievement, and dedication to their own work.
Work
Work, of course, is another major aspect of everyday life, and one where child
survivors were expected to find serious difficulty. The people in Light from the Ashes are all
successful researchers with doctorates, most of them with impressive lists of publications,
awards, and appointments. They are obviously drawn from a narrow segment of child survivors
in terms of their work history. What does a broader picture look like?
The devotion of child survivors to becoming educated was an important part of their
success. Upon emigrating, most were put into school grades below the norm for their age
because they spoke little or no English. Some, who stopped in several countries before finding
a final refuge, went through this experience repeatedly. Yet, most caught up: one of our
interviewees completed eleven grades in three years. Jack Lomranz, whose chapter in the book
is entitled “A Wandering Jew as a Social Scientist,” went to school in Germany, China, Israel,
and the U.S., getting his bachelor’s degree at night while supporting his survivor mother and
his own wife and child. In fact, despite financial and linguistic hardships, the proportion of
child survivors who earned at least one college degree was about as high as among North
American-born comparison subjects, and much higher than the population norm (Suedfeld,
Paterson, & Krell, 2002; Table 3).
Peter Suedfeld • 13
Table 3. Educational Achievement
Level Child Survivors Controls USA Population Norm
Finished Elementary 3 NA 11
Finished Secondary 14 8 38
Gymnasium 3 NA NA
Trade/Technical School 11 3 NA
Some University 11 22 17
Undergraduate Degree 19 30
Graduate Degree 41 38
(Percent of people responding)
Just as education was of great importance in their childhood and adolescence, so during
adulthood, work formed an important component of their identity and a source of self-esteem.
The relevant Eriksonian conflict (industry vs. inferiority) (Figure 6) shows their emphasis on
devotion to work.
Fig. 6. Eriksonian Crisis: Industry vs. Inferiority
On average, child survivors pursued occupations that were less prestigious than those
of the control subjects. Still, the child survivors’ status on an international scale of occupational
prestige (Ganzeboom and Treiman, 1996) was at the level equivalent to “software engineer;
computer programmer; engaged in business activities”: solidly in the middle to upper-middle
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
Tim
es m
entio
ned
Industry Inferiority
Child Survivors Adult Survivors
{ 19
14 • LIFE AFTER THE ASHES
class, not a negligible achievement for people whose past was so disrupted and whose future
had been predicted to be so bleak (Figure 7).
Fig. 7. Occupational Status
Most of the interviewed child survivors were not very interested in the convenience or
monetary rewards of their occupation. Their most valued job characteristics were: interesting
work, using their skills and talents, helpful/friendly co-workers, helping other people, and being
useful to society. Note that all but one of these—friendly co-workers—deal with intrinsic rather
than extrinsic values (Figure 8).
Fig. 8. Work Values
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Mea
n S
core
Occupational Status
Child Survivor Child Control Adult Survivor
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
Mea
n S
core
Interesting work
Using skills & talents
Helpful/friendly coworkers
Helping others
Useful to society
Good pay
Convenient hours
High social status
Child Survivors
Peter Suedfeld • 15
So far I have been talking about group averages. But we also found that, within
particular occupations, many individual survivors were quite successful. The eminence that
some have reached in their chosen professions is impressive, and is distributed across a variety
of life pursuits. Many young survivors eventually accomplished extraordinary achievements.
Just a short list of those who have name-recognition in North America includes eminent authors
(Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi), scientists (Roald Hoffmann, Nobel laureate for
chemistry), businessmen and entrepreneurs (George Soros and Jack Tramiel), soldiers (Maj.
Gen. Sidney Shachnow, U.S. Army, Retired), statesmen (Representative Tom Lantos),
filmmakers (Roman Polanski), and clergy (Israel Meir Lau, the Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of
Israel, and Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris).
Personality and Mental Health
How have child survivors adapted in the fifty-plus years since the war? One
inescapable conclusion, based on the evidence, is that we are not the psychologically and
socially crippled group that some people, including many mental health professionals, expected
us to be.
During the war, Jewish children learned about rejection, denigration, fear, and anxiety;
about the physical traumas of injury, hunger, cold, and exhaustion; and, perhaps most intensely,
about being separated from their parents and placed with adults who were unknown and
unpredictable. Younger children, who did not understand what was going on, felt that their
parents had abandoned them. Many of our interviewees mentioned informers—not only known
antisemites but also nuns, family friends, and even fellow Jews—who gave them up to the
Nazis. As I have already mentioned, their experiences after the war were no more reassuring
about the wisdom of depending on other people.
What do child survivors value? Self-direction—autonomy, independence—is a primary
value that appears in both the interview tapes and the chapters of Light from the Ashes, with
security close behind (Table 4). The contributors to the book greatly value achievement, and
place notably higher value than the average interviewee on stimulation and universalism, which
refers to “understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people
and for nature” (Schwartz, 1992, p. 12; emphasis in original).
16 • LIFE AFTER THE ASHES
Table 4. Personal Values
Value Light from the Ashes Interviews
Achievement 48 32
Stimulation 25 12
Self-Direction 47 34
Universalism 34 11
Benevolence 20 21
Security 34 34
Spirituality 29 27
(Mentioned by percent)
Child survivors are aware that the world is neither fair nor predictable (see Figure 9);
but although their satisfaction with their life is, on average, lower than the satisfaction reported
by adult survivors and by controls, it is still well on the positive side of neutral. There is one
exception: to no one’s surprise, child survivors agree that they wish they could change some
aspects of their life (Figure 10).
Fig. 9. Fairness and Predictability of Life
0
5
10
15
20
25
Per
cent
Men
tione
d
Life is not fair Life is fair Life isunpredictable
No effect/Didn'tanswer
Child Survivors Child Controls Adult Survivors
Peter Suedfeld • 17
Fig. 10. Satisfaction with Life
None of the groups shows much consensus on expectations from life (Table 5), but the
child survivors’ emphasis on self-reliance differs substantially from that of other groups.
Table 5. Expectations from Life
Expectation Child Survivors Controls Adult Survivors
You must be self-reliant 9 1 1
Expect the worst 5 5 4
Expect goodness 1 0 1
Don’t expect anything 4 0 3
Expect less than you put in 4 1 1
No effect/Didn’t answer 33 14 11
(Mean times mentioned)
What do they believe in? Well, it isn’t religion. Figure 1 illustrated that their accounts
of coping during the Holocaust did show an increase in reliance on supernatural protection. But
that diminished after the war. In the long run, the religious beliefs of most were weakened, if
not destroyed, by their experiences (Figure 11).
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Life close toideal
Lifeconditions
areexcellent
Satisfiedwith my life
I have theimportant
things
Wouldn'tchangeanything
Mea
n S
core
Child Survivors Child Controls Adult Survivors
Neutral Point
18 • LIFE AFTER THE ASHES
Fig. 11. Changes in Religious Beliefs
They do not seem to have a very high opinion of themselves: their self-worth is lower
than that of adult survivors and the control group. In view of their success in adapting to a
series of challenging circumstances and building solid families and careers, this finding was
one of our major surprises (Figure 12).
Fig. 12. Self-Worth
One long-term after-effect of their experiences is a heightened aversion to the emotion
of anxiety (Figure 13). Perhaps anxiety was so acute and long-lasting in their childhood as to
make it even more unpleasant than it is for most people; in any case, they try to avoid both its
psychological and physiological signs.
0
5
10
15
20
25
Per
cent
Men
tione
d
Became morereligious
Gave up onreligion
No effect/Didn'tanswer
Child Survivors Child Controls Adult Survivors
3.8
4
4.2
4.4
4.6
4.8
5
5.2
Mea
n S
core
Self-Worth
Child Survivors Child Controls Adult Survivors
Peter Suedfeld • 19
Fig. 13. Anxiety Sensitivity
What about the infamous post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which according to
popular myth afflicts all trauma survivors? The symptoms that make up this psychiatric
diagnostic category include, among other problems: repeated intrusive memories of the
traumatic events, nightmares and other sleep problems, flashbacks, repressed memories,
emotional constriction, outbursts of anger, and difficulty in concentrating. The data (Table 6)
refute previous assumptions about post-traumatic stress. Forty percent of the interviewees
report no symptoms at all, 30% report one, and for two or more symptoms the frequency of
report drops to 0–10%. In essence, the full-blown psychiatric PTSD syndrome is absent. The
most frequently mentioned symptoms, mentioned by fewer than one-third of the respondents,
are hardly signs of serious maladjustment. They are: distress at reminders of the Holocaust and
avoidance of thoughts, feelings, and conversations related to it.
Table 6. Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms
Number of Symptoms Percent of Survivors
0 40%
1 30%
2 10%
3 10%
4 10%
5 0%
6 0%
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
Mea
n S
core
Fear of the consequences of anxiety Fear of the physical sensations ofanxiety
Child Survivors Child Controls Adult Survivors
20 • LIFE AFTER THE ASHES
This is not because the child survivors are unwilling to admit that they have problems.
In fact, quite a few of them acknowledge getting psychological help, for example from
vocational or marital counselors. They are less given to litigation; and having survived so
much, they may feel themselves invulnerable to disease and seldom consult doctors or
pharmacists (Table 7).
Table 7. Seeking Professional Help
Help Received Child Survivors Controls Adult Survivors
Educational Help 16 27 0
Legal Help 19 60 4
Medical Help 19 84 35
Religious Help 8 22 0
Pharmaceutical Help 3 32 4
Psychological Help 35 27 22 (Mentioned by percent)
I have referred to the fact that even the youngest survivors of the Holocaust are now
approaching old age. On the whole, they seem to be facing it with serenity. Erikson’s next crisis
opposes generativity—a concern for future generations—to self-absorption. Our chapter
contributors and our research participants feel great concern for future generations, rather than
being focused on their own problems and future (Figure 14). This concern extends far beyond
their own families, and is perhaps most clearly characterized by the driving urge to prevent
others from suffering as the survivor did. Many survivors are active in Holocaust education in
the schools, as well as in a spectrum of other volunteer activities.
Fig. 14. Eriksonian Crisis: Generativity vs. Self-Absorption
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
Tim
es m
entio
ned
Generativity Self-Absorption
Child Survivors Adult Survivors
Peter Suedfeld • 21
The research areas of the contributors to Light from the Ashes reflect these concerns.
They are heavily weighted toward three topics. One is understanding and helping children at
risk, ethnic minorities, and a variety of vulnerable groups. These groups have included street
children in Europe, North Africa, and the U.S.; women with unwanted pregnancies and their
unwanted children; and aboriginal and immigrant children in Australia, among others. Another
major topic is analyses of and interventions for people who had to deal with emergencies and
disasters, or who experienced traumatic stress in combat, in terrorist activities, or in organized
persecutions. The third topic of concern is the general area of intergroup violence, conflict, and
reconciliation, from the first contacts between Europeans and indigenous Americans through
the wars and quasi-wars of the twentieth century.
The last major psychosocial conflict, according to Erik Erikson, is how one looks back
on one's life as its end approaches. Erikson poses the choices as integrity versus despair: the
perception of one’s life as a worthwhile, integrated whole, rather than as meaningless and
disconnected. In spite of the upheavals and dislocations of their early years, the child survivors
in our research, almost without exception, find that their life has been comprehensible,
meaningful, and satisfying (Figure 15).
Fig. 15. Eriksonian Crisis: Integrity vs. Despair
Conclusions
Both our research data and the chapters in Light from the Ashes come primarily from
child survivors whose physical and mental health is sufficiently good that they lived until at
least the 1980s and were willing and able to write a chapter, to be interviewed, or to attend a
gathering. By definition, we could not collect information from those survivors who were
severely and permanently psychologically crippled, nor from those who died earlier, from
whatever causes.
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
Tim
es m
entio
ned
Integrity Despair
Child Survivors Adult Survivors
22 • LIFE AFTER THE ASHES
On the whole, the child survivors included in our study are doing pretty well, although
they do have a skeptical view of the benevolence and trustworthiness of other people. They are
independent-minded; their problem-solving approaches are rational and problem-oriented
(Suedfeld et al., 1997, 1998). Their educational and occupational achievements are impressive,
especially considering all of the disruptions they had to overcome. What they value most about
work is its intrinsic satisfaction, not its material rewards or prestige (Suedfeld et al., 2002).
The child survivors’ family lives are generally positive, and I would guess probably no
worse than any other group of people living in the same culture and the same places. The
expectation that child survivors would be predominantly or universally maladjusted is simply
wrong. Their mental health seems generally good: although they have a few problems, such as
lower self-esteem, they suffer from few if any of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress
disorder. Now in their 60s and 70s, they view their life with contentment and acceptance.
In contrast to the early pessimistic predictions about the future of child survivors, we
now know that many, perhaps most, have overcome the most severe effects of trauma and have
been leading essentially normal lives. What Hemmendinger and Krell (2000, p. 177) recently
wrote about children who survived Buchenwald applies to the entire cohort: “Who could have
thought on April 11, 1945, that any child of that barely living remnant, representing so many
murdered children, would succeed against such overwhelming odds to live a productive and
meaningful life? Not the experts.”
It is perhaps unfair to blame the experts. No psychologist or psychiatrist had ever
before faced patients who had gone through such well-organized, relentless, and multi-faceted
persecution, and there was no foundation of previous experience upon which to base
predictions. Based on what was known in 1945 and 1946, and the parlous state of the recently
liberated survivors, the prognoses were reasonable. Therapists and social scientists then, and—
with much less justification—many of their successors even to this day, focused on the
unprecedented horrors experienced by the survivors of the Holocaust. They also saw the
emotional reactions that may have aided in survival, and interpreted them as symptoms of
psychiatric disturbance rather than as what they were: adaptations to bizarre conditions, which
would not necessarily persist once those conditions disappeared. The experts did not realize,
and some still do not fully appreciate, the resilience and hardiness of the human spirit that has
enabled survivors to live through and recover from those horrors (see Suedfeld, 1997).
Peter Suedfeld • 23
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24 • LIFE AFTER THE ASHES
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Peter Suedfeld • 25
Acknowledgments
This work could not have been conducted without the participation of many survivors,
to whom I am very grateful; nor without the help of colleagues, students, and research
assistants, especially Dr. Robert Krell, Charlene Fell, Helen Paterson, and Tara Weiszbeck. In
connection with the publication of Light from the Ashes, I thank the contributors and our editor,
Ellen McCarthy.
The research has been funded by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada, the Hampton Fund and the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced
Studies of the University of British Columbia, and the Mershon Center of the Ohio State
University. Organizational support has been provided by those two universities, the Vancouver
Holocaust Centre, and the Columbus (OH) Jewish Historical Society.
Both of my chapters in the book and this paper benefited immensely from the
comments of several friendly critics, especially Dr. Phyllis J. Johnson, on a series of drafts.
PETER SUEDFELD is Dean Emeritus of Graduate Studies and Professor Emeritus of
Psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He is a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Canada and of the New York Academy of Sciences. Dr. Suedfeld was born in
Budapest to a Hungarian-Jewish family of writers, scholars, and musicians. When the German
Army entered Budapest in March 1944, he survived in hiding as a Christian child until the city
was liberated by Soviet troops in early 1945. He emigrated to the United States in 1948,
arriving in New York at age 13. He subsequently served three years in the U.S. Army before
receiving his bachelor’s degree from Queens College. His master’s and doctorate (1963) are
from Princeton University. He joined the Department of Psychology at the University of British
Columbia in 1972. Professor Suedfeld has authored, edited, and coedited more than 200
scientific articles and numerous books, including Light from the Ashes: Social Science Careers
of Young Holocaust Refugees and Survivors (2001). In his work, Dr. Suedfeld has critically
examined his own history and the history of other child survivors forced at a young age to
choose educational and professional paths in new countries, new languages, and new cultures.